I'm fairly excited for Unity, as it looks like a promising new direction for Ubuntu. However, I do have a concern - will it be possible to use Unity without the global menu?

I have my window manager set to focus-follows-mouse/sloppy focus, and find the productivity gains to be immense. Sloppy focus is incompatible, however, with global menus, as it is possible for the focus to change while you move from window to menu.

Will Unity support an option to use window menus while still using Unity?

7 Answers
7

11.04 - 13.10

Yes, the Desktop version of Unity will use the global menu by default.

To disable the global menu remove the indicator-appmenu
package, then log out and back in.

Unity will continue to run without it and your menus will appear inside the application windows as normal. You can also tell the appmenu to ignore specific applications if you're having a problematic app.

I hate the global menu and for that reason mac os too. Thanks for your tip.
–
harryOct 18 '13 at 9:38

@Rmano thx vm! good I read it.. your comment should actually be an answer as it works great and I can keep my indicator-appmenu!!! if you do it, point out so I come promptly vote up!
–
Aquarius PowerJan 17 '14 at 2:04

14.04

The Global Menu can be optionally switched in favour of Local Integrated Menus (LIM) - aka - more traditional window based menus.

The reason for this additional ability is ostensibly due to the increasing prevalence of high-resolution displays and as such the perceived mouse-travel from application to the global-menu would be relatively large.

To toggle the global menu off or on can be achieved via the appearance control-panel applet:

Once clicked, the application menus appear within the window decoration as shown here:

Command line.

The above can be achieved using the terminal command:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity integrated-menus true

Integrated menus can be disabled (i.e. switch global menu back on)

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity integrated-menus false

If you dont like Locally Integrated Menus then the old trick of removing indicator-appmenu still works although this will break the HUD

I have been successfully using unity with focus follows mouse and the global menu by only accessing the application menu via the f10 key shortcut. In many ways this is better than moving the mouse away from where ever you were focused on anyway.